Here’s a good one – just heard on the radio that someone suggested the wife had postpartum depression and radicalized her husband. Can’t make this stuff up.
Now the news is showing the inside of their apartment. It took forever to get the plywood off the front door. It’s just like Geraldo’s opening of Al Capone’s safe.
Co-worker said he was different after he returned from Saudi Arabia with his wife.
“I think he married a terrorist” is the money quote.
So if we’re blaming the family of these terrorists, why aren’t we blaming the woman that Christian terrorist Robert Dear lived with? She didn’t alert authorities either.
I don’t know the particulars of that woman’s story but at the time I was extremely critical of Adam Lanza’s mother and father and of the UC Santa Barbara shooter’s mother and father and of the Virginia Tech shooter’s family.
If those closest to these ‘off’ individuals look the other way or do nothing, then the first and best line of defense is gone.
low-paid government employee
black Lexus
guns
=
drugs
I always feel very bad for the families of people who do terrible things (of course my heart aches for the victims and their families). I think it’s the very rare mother who doesn’t dream of a successful, happy and honorable life for her children, and now no matter what the reason this happened, the family will never really be allowed to grieve.
“So if we’re blaming the family of these terrorists, why aren’t we blaming the woman that Christian terrorist Robert Dear lived with? She didn’t alert authorities either.”
Why do you try so hard to change the topic and bring up things that are completely irrelevant to this case? Are you trying to excuse this violence, blame it on someone else?
Still waiting for someone to bring up the Crusades.
CF: I never believed the Columbine parents either who said they had no idea that their sons had weapons, bombs, and grenades in their rooms.
I think denials like that are an effort to shield themselves from civil liability after the fact.
In this San Bernardino terror case, I’d bet there were other individuals who knew what was going on. Naturally they don’t want to admit it now. They could be co-conspirators.
Just watch any Dateline Murder investigation show, and you will see the ability of family to turn a blind eye to just about anything, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Nooo, please. Not an invitation, even tongue in cheek, to bring up the crusades. Then it will be Huns, goths and the French Revolution.
I don’t think “blame” is the issue here. The issue is trying to get a handle on how big the problem is. Was this a rogue, self-recruited couple acting alone or is there a larger group living in this community supporting this type of violence. That’s an important follow-up to this tragedy.
If law enforcement determines others saw the bomb making materials or assisted in obtaining them, then certain inferences can be made. Ultimately that’s for law enforcement to figure out, but certainly they have to look at family members and friends.
When I think back to my youth, I and people I know had a lot going on in our lives that our parents didn’t know about. And here on CC we frequently hear from distraught parents who have discovered that their kids were hiding important things from them. I have no trouble at all believing that children have secrets from their parents.
That these terrorist had co-conspirators is not so hard to believe. But that doesn’t mean every friend or relative was a co-conspirator.
Agreed, and I don’t think anyone here has advanced the idea that every friend or relative was a co-conspirator.
It’s not two separate problems, though. It’s terrorists who are American and our lax gun laws giving them all the weaponry they need to wreak havoc. Access to assault weapons and endless rounds of ammunition are not irrelevant side issues.
There will always be bad guys in our society. Having access to guns and ammunition is what makes them dangerous.
News media were allowed in and are swarming the apartment where the say the shooters, baby and grandma lived. So where is grandma?
If she’s smart, she’s hiding. I wouldn’t want to face the vulture media.
I don’t think this was a ‘low paid civil servant’, the guy is in his late 20’s and was making like 70k a year, which is not exactly working at Walmart level wages (that includes benefits, of course). It may not be crazy money, but even in the tech field that kind of salary for someone his age is not ridiculously low. From what I understand, the area they lived in was not exactly SF or LA in terms of cost of living, especially housing.
The TV reporting from inside the house was disgusting. It would be one thing if they showed the bomb making factory in the garage, which is relevant to the case, but they showed the baby’s room, with the crib, and the reporter was going through the kids toys and such, as if it was a major revelation…what the hell does that have to do with the story? Did they expect for the kids teething ring a bunch of toy grenades on a string?
As far as the story itself, the whole it is a workplace shooting, that he shot up the place because of a dispute with some idiot coworker, is nothing more than a desperate attempt to make this non terrorism related, even though the facts made it pretty clear early on this was planned. The SUV was rented, they had pipe bombs, they had battle gear, and now finding thousands of rounds of ammunition and pipe bombs and bomb making material make clear what the motive was and that they were planning all kinds of mayhem. It could be they decided to pull the trigger on the party because the guy felt picked on by some idiot, but that was the nature of the target, not the reason. Hopefully if these two losers had other people they were involved with here in the US, there is enough evidence to be able to get them off the street.
I too wonder about the statement that no one knew, unless this guy was the greatest actor in history, you mean none of the people around him, people he prayed with, his family, never heard anything that suggested he was radicalized, that he for example never talked about the evil being done to Muslims or the like, nothing at all? Leaving out the terrorism aspect of this, when mass shootings happen people around the shooter always tend to say things like “I didn’t see anything to indicate X would do that kind of thing”, but then, as with Adam Lanza, or with the kids at Columbine, people start saying “but you know, it was kind of odd, that the always seemed to be alone, and they wore weird clothing and seemed withdrawn” or with Lanza “Well, we knew he had emotional issues, he seemed to spend all his time locked in his room playing violent video games”, and somehow they didn’t think this was odd or troubling? I don’t think the lowlife’s family in this case deliberately witheld information, rather I think that people have to get out of the mindset of assuming that odd behavior is simply that, and be more aware. human beings want to rationalize that things are normal, and it causes all kinds of false assumptions, like in the run up to 9/11 there were reports of these Saudi guys taking flight training where they didn’t seem interested in taking off and landing, and if it got reported, somehow mysteriously was dismissed by law enforcement as being nothing…
The search widens to a home in Corona.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-san-bernardino-shooting-corona-home-20151204-story.html